January 2022
Teachers burning out. Teacher sickouts. And the looming exodus of educators from our classrooms is not just about remote learning whiplash and the ongoing staffing challenges. This is about the years and years of overwhelming working conditions and the corrosive sense of respect we have for those who serve in our schools — the pandemic was simply the tipping point.
Teachers TikToking to Encanto’s “Surface Pressure”
Tipping point for edtech
Educators have launched more edtech tools, platforms, features, and ways to look at student data than anyone could have predicted was possible considering the rate of conventional change in our schools. This has also meant that our teachers are in a rare position for evaluating which tech additions are most valuable and which are redundant, which are empowering for teachers and their students — not just recommended by researchers at a distance from the classroom.
One interesting insight on this point is that educators report that they are feeling able to assess their how their students are doing less well than before, according to a recent EdWeek poll. Only 17% of teachers working with new technologies say that their understanding of students’ learning has improved.
“Educators teaching during the pandemic felt they and their colleagues weren’t as able to assess students’ academic strengths, weaknesses, and interests as well as before, weakening a key tenant of personalized learning.
In fact, more than half of educators said this ability was diminished, with 11 percent saying they were ‘much less’ able to personalize learning.”
Talking to make change
Our students are also telling us in surveys and interviews and news stories that they are ready for changes in schooling as well — to change the sense of boredom and stress (both words that come up in multiple forms in the survey word cloud below) that they associate with school at the moment.
And these changes need to start in the classroom, in our daily interactions with our students — not only when it is time for another survey or an SEL unit. Knowing who is talking and what they are talking about most during your instruction is a powerful illustration of this kind of change in action. (It is also the reason TeachFX was founded!).
If you haven’t checked our insights out in a while — and we totally understand why — you are in for a treat. Check out the TeachFX word cloud and the new TeachFX insight about how teachers build productively on what students are thinking during instruction:
Pointing to our own data
I was looking back at a lesson I TeachFXed recently and was reminded that even the best-laid open-ended questions and most singing lesson plans can fail to engage students’ attention if our instructional practices do not prioritize classroom discourse as a vehicle for learning.
As you can see by the many chunks of red Teacher Talk and the slivers of blue Student Talk pinging back and forth over the course of my lesson.
But unlike so much of what we face in education, this is an action you can take and can change for classes and classes of your future students.
Change we are all behind
The optimist in me believes that the opportunity for the change teachers have long known was needed in our schools has never been more possible. And on the other side of it, teachers will emerge as the trusted, respected, valued — and fairly compensated — professionals we know them to be as our colleagues and in our communities.
The Teacher Salary Project is an excellent illustration of the organizations that have been doing this work, have been busy gathering wide support from the community all this time, and are ready not just to embrace the change but to lead us there. The entire TeachFX team has signed on because we believe in the power of teachers just like you to make our world a better, more interesting and awesome place for all.
Until we talk next,
Debra